Sparrows using the pampas plumes

When they cleared my next door neighbour's garden they left a clump of pampas that had encroached into my garden.

I chopped down as much of the leaves as possible - oh so much space it's given me! But I left the plumes as last year the sparrows used them to line their nests.

The weeks passed but no sparrows. I wondered whether it was because of the loss of the bushes in Dorothy's garden. Then on Sunday afternoon just before I finished my session reading in my hammock I saw two sparrows collecting the fluff from the plumes. I saw them again when I opened the curtains on Monday morning.

Not as much activity as last year, but at least they have taken some.

A colleague at work spins, and those birds in her garden who line their nests get bits of alpaca wool!

Sparrows the bosses of the drinking bowl!

I have a casserole dish which I fill with water and put in the garden in the summer for the foxes and the cats. This year I've seen birds using it too.

This morning I looked out of the bedroom window to see a sparrow drinking while a female blackbird waited her turn (though there would have been room for both to drink). When the blackbird was drinking another sparrow flew down for a drink and the blackbird gave up her turn for him.

Eventually she got a proper turn and after a drink she also had a bath.

On my cycle ride home yesterday after blackberrying I saw a lesser spotted woodpecker in the cleared shrubby area that they've put a path through alongside Orient Way (the Ruckholt Relief Road that was).

A fellow kayaker has had all the corn off his corn on the cobs on his allotment eaten - he thinks parakeets.